


Hooked

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF, Just Puddings (Web Series), Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster (Podcast)
Genre: Blow Jobs, First Time, Friends to Lovers, House Party, Jealousy, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 11:43:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20638616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: From the prompt: James Acaster/Ed Gamble: seeing each other on a dating app. Could be grindr, but it doesn't have to be..





	Hooked

The party they’d all ended up piling into post-charity gig — at a slim new-build townhouse in Hammersmith, possibly belonging to a university friend of Tom’s — has been fun, but the night seems to now be just about past its peak, and so Ed is starting to wonder about heading home.

He had been wedged good-naturedly between Tom and Suzi on a sofa, but they’d wandered off, leaving him alone. James is curled up in an Eames chair opposite him, hair at the back of his head set askew by the leather, his slightly flushed face lit up by his phone screen. Ed watches him for a moment, considering asking him if he’s thinking about leaving too, but Ed’s sofa is so comfortable and James is far enough away to be out of talking range over the Sonos.

It seems a shame, Ed thinks, taking out his own phone, to make the short trip from here to home, a few happy drinks down after a great gig with his friends, and not to take to take the opportunity for a nightcap. His thumb hovers over the Bumble icon: he knows he’s got a couple of messages today he hasn’t had a chance to respond to.

He looks across the room again. James, he realises, is staring at his phone with some intensity, nervously worrying his bottom teeth with his teeth. It’s made his mouth all pink.

Sighing (internally, at himself, at how his predictable dick twitches in his stupid pants), Ed swipes to the next page of his home screen and opens up Grindr instead. It’s been a few weeks since he’s last used it – he prefers to try his luck with strangers face-to-face when possible, for one – but it’s there when it’s needed.

Oh _god_.

The first photo he sees, of a pale, guileless-looking man in a thin white t-shirt that he’d already tapped on to make full screen, was unmistakably James. He’d put a different name up and was covering his eyes with one forearm, but Ed knew what James’s mouth and jaw and arms and day-old stubble looked like, thank you very much.

Plus the tag saying the man in the photograph, only slightly inaccurately, was zero feet away from him. So there was that.

Has James been out there, experimenting, and Ed hadn’t known about it? How many people had he already managed to get with? It’s not like they’d know his personality, is it? They wouldn’t care how clever and funny he was, or take the time to find out, Ed thinks with a surge of strange anger, they’d just skip straight to getting him on his knees and…

Is that what James wanted? Would James do that? The image is right there for him, almost as if it isn’t the first time Ed has ever thought about it: James looking up, eyes dark and wide and half-hidden under the length of his fringe, the jut of his swallowing throat, a large hand belonging to someone else cradling his cheek, and there’s a dark dangerous swoop in the pit of Ed’s stomach.

Without giving himself any more time to think about it, or even to tap through to the full text of the profile, he types out a message and sends it. _Hi there, Pat._ he says. _I know you’ve got form on coming up with undercover stories, so if you fancy coming up with a joke reason why you’re on here I promise I’ll never mention it again._

Then he get the dubious pleasure of watching, heart in his mouth, in real time, the few seconds it takes for the message to show on James’s phone, which he’s still glued to, the way James’s face reddens magnificently, and then the way James looks directly at Ed for an excruciating half second before getting out of his armchair and leaving the room.

Shit, Ed thinks. Please let him not have not fucked up everything forever.

A moment later, Ed gets a message back. 

_Upstairs_

Ed leaps up, almost spilling several half-full drinks on the coffee table in front of him in the process, and heads for the hallway.

Upstairs, he ignores all the closed doors and the bathroom and goes for the door that’s been cracked minutely open. He finds an ultra-tidy bedroom devoid of non-decorative personal possessions and, sure enough, James is sitting on the edge of the immaculate bed, ends of his fingers tight against the edges of his jumper sleeves, frowning and looking caught off-guard.

“Bit mean of you,” James says once Ed’s shut the door. “Not like you. I presume you had suspicions and downloaded the app yourself to check.”

“No!” Ed says, belly in worried knots, gripped by the need to swiftly correct James so he stops misunderstanding. “I’m on it… I’m on there anyway. Sometimes.”

“Oh,” James says, then shuts his mouth again.

“How long,” Ed says. “Have you—”

“Only a couple of weeks,” James tells him, a flush still high on his cheeks. “Since finishing the tour. Got plenty of to-the-point messages, but I haven’t actually… What if someone recognises me? What if they put the whole inevitably disastrous experience in a Twitter thread? I don’t know what I was thinking, actually. I always do something stupid after a tour. It’s too much thinking time from being on your own.”

“Oh, thank fuck for that,” Ed breathes. He’s still standing up just in front of the closed door and wants to give James space, but he can’t help in his relief step just a little closer before he stops himself again. “I mean, sorry; I’m not trying to police you, of course you can go out and do whatever you want, but if you want someone to… You know. I’m a good friend. That you already know.”

There is a long silence.

“I didn’t think we did _this_,” James says eventually, even though, maddeningly, they haven’t actually done anything. “You always seem to just, you know, meet people. We’re already friends. And we work together.”

“Is that honestly what you’ve been thinking?”

(That’s not the full version of the question Ed wants to ask. What Ed _really_ wants to know is whether James has been spending any of his lonely nights in hotel rooms thinking about _Ed_, and not just as a friend, when he’s been getting himself off in the dark, or if the thought has genuinely never occurred to him before and is, as they speak, exploding his poor, repressed brain.)

“Actually, I hadn’t got that far until now,” James admits, looking at the floor intently. “I… I just didn’t think you’d want to.”

If he didn’t act now, Ed thinks, taking two more steps forward until he’s standing right in front of James, James is going to leave with the wrong idea, and Ed’s going to have to hear about, maybe even see, James with other men who’ve made him feel good, but they’d never want to see James again after, or, worse, one of them _would_, and Ed realises now he’d barely be able to stand it.

Ed leans forward so their faces are uncomfortably close together, his two hands spreading over the top of James’s thighs to make a proprietary claim (and to keep his balance), and they’re too close to each other for Ed’s eyes to focus properly, but like this he can feel the warm tremble of James’s legs under his cords, and the hot puff of his surprised breath against Ed’s cheek. Zero feet away at last.

“Of course I want to,” Ed says quietly, and gives James a hot-mouthed kiss.

James doesn’t pull away, and makes a tiny little whine that he quickly swallows down that Ed wants to hear from him again and again. Ed keeps his hands tight on James’s thighs until he finally pulls back, his teeth tugging at James’s lower lip as he withdraws, which makes James shudder in pleasure, his jaw jutting out a little so that Ed’s mouth can stay on him for a moment longer.

Opening his eyes, James looks up at Ed, dazed, as if that had been the last response he’d been expecting.

“What if _I_ don’t want to,” James says sullenly after a dry swallow, but his mouth is quirking upwards. He already looks half-wrecked. “You can be quite mean to me, you know.”

“Yeah,” Ed says over the fast beat of his heart. It feels far louder to him than the muffled music from downstairs. “But you like it.”

Even from only having his hands on James’s thighs, Ed can feel the heat from James’s erection, and he knows what he wants to do next. James didn’t sign up to hook-up apps for _kissing_, did he?

With, Ed thinks, impressive muscle control – thank you, hours upon boring hours of gym time – he crouches down, then sinks to his knees. He slides his hands down James’s legs then pushes at where they meet, trying to encourage James to relax his thighs apart. James looks down at him.

“Well, clearly I can do that better,” James scoffs, and Ed bursts into sharp, delighted laughter.

“I meant… I’ve had plenty of practice getting on my knees,” James mumbles, which doesn’t stop Ed from laughing. “But, wait—”

“No. I want you to relax—”

“—Ed, I’m in someone else’s _house_; there isn’t even a lock on the door—”

“Well, you were perfectly willing to go off with some Grindr headless torso to where-the-fuck-ever until about five minutes ago, so—”

“_You’ve_ been the one out of the two of us who’s been doing that, apparently, so don’t be such a hypocrite.”

“Thought about you, though,” Ed throws out as he brings a hand up to James’s crotch, heading for his flies; he uses his other hand to discretely adjust his so-far-ignored hard-on. “During.” 

“_What”,_ James says, eyes fixed on where Ed’s hand is undoing James’s trousers with not completely terrible hand-eye coordination considering the circumstances. James’s breath is coming quicker again, and Ed wants to hear more of that sound too.

“Yeah. I mean, people do that all the time. I don’t feel bad about it.”

“Oh,” James says half-heartedly. “Is that like a doing the alphabet backwards thing, or going through the times tables? Thinking about me so you’d last? Oh my _god_.”

The _oh my god_ is because Ed has got James’s cords undone now, and has his hand over James’s underwear and around the thick bulge of his cock. He can feel the hard heat, and the slickness gathering at the tip, and his insides leap in excitement.

“The opposite, I promise,” Ed tells him. He swallows. “Why, do you think about me to make yourself last?” he asks.

James shakes his head guiltily in reply, and Ed can’t help grinning up him in delight. 

“I want you to enjoy this, okay? _I’m_ certainly going to enjoy it, so don’t worry about that.”

He pulls down James’s trousers and boxers — James lifts his hips so Ed can get the waistband down — then James falls back so he’s lying down on the duvet. Ed gets his hand back between James’s thin, now bare, thighs, and pushes them apart; James gasps.

James is incredibly hard, which is gratifying, and Ed gently wraps his hand around James’s cock. James, laid out on the bed, wriggles against Ed’s teasing palm. His thighs keep twitching and Ed is, momentarily, mesmerised by the flex of James’s foot, still in his shoes.

Ed wants to burn the image in his mind forever, keep it all for himself just in case it doesn’t happen again. His own erection by now feels obscene, trapped in his jeans.

“Do you want me to suck you off?” Ed asks, his mouth right by the wet red head of James’s dick.

“Yes please,” James tells the ceiling with pained enthusiasm, and Ed huffs out a laugh before he finally takes James’s cock in his mouth.

He slides down steadily, knees comfortable on the deep pile rug underneath him. James voices half a swear word. Ed moans back, which in turn makes James’s hip jump up.

He keeps things slow, simple and tight, revelling in the feeling of James’s thigh against his cheek, the full feeling of James’s big cock in his mouth, hot against his tongue. He wonders if he should have taken off James’s jumper, listens to the music downstairs move to the next track, hears with a jolt of excited dread someone come upstairs to use the bathroom, then leave to go back downstairs again.

Most of all, though, he’s listening to the sounds James makes: the soft moans Ed can pull from him, and the overwhelming feeling that comes with it. When Ed pulls off to take a breath and marvel at the spit stringing between James’s cock and his mouth when he goes, James groans like Ed’s teasing him something rotten.

“Stay still,” he tells James, amused and crazily turned on, and James whines gratifyingly and doesn’t manage to follow the instruction for a moment.

Ed goes back down, listening for James’s breaths quickening further still, then reaches forward with his arms and holds James’s hips down, pushing the palms of his hands under James’s jumper so his hands are wrapped around James’s waist, and James says _oh_ and shakes and comes copiously into Ed’s mouth.

Ed swallows, then pulls off and uses his fingers to shove the rest of the incriminating spit and come that’s on his chin into his mouth, making sure none has got on James’s jumper. James’s eyes are still closed, and he looks as happy as sin.

Ed flops down on the bed beside him and starts on the alphabet backwards.

“Can I take you home?” Ed asks James, voice slightly hoarse.

“You’ll let me stay over?” James asks in surprise. “Don’t you still need to get off? Unless you weren’t into that.”

“Well, we are in this random person’s spare room…” Ed begins, and James laughs. “I was incredibly into that. And yeah, of course you’re staying over. You think I no longer want sight of you or something?”

“Well,” James says. He’s pulling his trousers back up. “I appreciate the one-time favour and all, but I thought you might want some space so we can go back to normal.”

“Oh,” Ed says, reaching down to the floor for his phone. “Do you want this to be a one-time favour or something?”

“No,” James mutters, and Ed finds himself smiling down at the screen despite himself.

“Good,” Ed says.

“What are you doing?” James asks. “Don’t be lazy – you live too close by to be ordering an Uber.”

“I’m deleting my hook-up apps, idiot,” Ed says, rolling his eyes, before making sure he’s actually meeting James’s flighty gaze. “Then we’re going to walk back to my flat and go inside, and then I’m going to get you completely undressed and I’m going to fuck you and then you’re not going to leave. All right?”

“_Ed_,” James says, somehow managing to blush yet again, but his mouth goes all slack in a way that’s distractingly inviting. “Yeah, that’s. That’s all right. With me. Let’s go.”


End file.
